History of the English Language

Introduction

Source: Baugh & Cable

• Relations of language and political, economic, and social history

• Language change and decay

• vocabulary, borrowings
• meaning changes: e.g. Shakespeare's nice = foolish
• pronounciation changes: stan -> stone, cu -> cow
• grammatical changes: analogy

• English, some historical factors influencing change:
  • Christianization of England (starting 597), Church's Latin
  • Scandinavian invasions
  • Norman conquest
  • Hundred Years' War
  • rise of the middle class
  • Renaissance
  • colonial expansion, trade
  • imperialism
  • industry and commerce

• Dominant role of English in the world

• 497 million speakers of English, cf.:
  • Mandarin 1,025 m.
  • Spanish 409 m.
  • Russian 279 m.
  • Portuguese 187m.
  • German, 126 m.
  • French 127 m.
• language dominance and economic, technological factors
• relation of population growth and language use
• lingua franca
• growth of English as second language (300 million+ speakers) and as pidgin or creole
• artificial international languages, e.g. Volapuk, Esperanto, lack of success; patriotism and nationalistic feelings have worked against such experiments

• English, Some Features

  Germanic language (same language branch as German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian)

  over half its words come from Latin

  capacity for assimilation, adaptability, flexibility, inflectional simplicity (low degree of "markedness"), loss of grammatical gender, relative ease of learning, mixed vocabulary

  borrowings from many languages, some examples:

  • Native American: chipmunk, hominy, moose, raccoon
  • Dutch: brandy, landscape, measles, uproar, wagon
  • Italian: piano, umbrella, volcano,
  • Spanish: alligator, mosquito, tornado
  • Persian: paradise, chess, check, lemon, spinach

   

• English, Some disadvantages:

  incompatibility of spelling and pronunciation

  extensive use of idioms

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